It
has just become even harder for baseball to whimper its sad tales of
poverty, what with the Boston Red Sox valued at $700 million during the
current sale of the franchise. Bud Selig is still frantically trying to whack two franchises, yet two
owners who purport to have failed in Montreal and Florida are hustling to
buy other teams in other towns. I know — location, location, location. Boston is a better cable
television town than, let's say, Montreal. But still, the competition to
buy the Red Sox exposes the double standard in baseball's sob story. Yes, there is a grotesque gap between the haves and the have-nots in
baseball. The Yankees gorged themselves with Jason Giambi and other
players after their fifth pennant in six years. The Mets, on a compulsive
shopping spree, were going after Mo Vaughn. Tell you what. If I owned a club, I would be leery of paying for
Anaheim's Mo Vaughn. The big guy was throwing out hints that he would even
return to the Red Sox. Not if I had a proxy vote, and maybe I do. Vaughn is a mensch who would be one of the most dynamic personalities
ever to dress in the Mets' clubhouse. But it is not his character that
concerns me. It is the repaired torn left biceps tendon that kept him out
last season. At last report, the Mets' management had scurried up to New England to
inspect Vaughn's alleged 270- pound frame, up from 245 the last time he
played. It must be nice to contemplate paying $50 million for three years
to a burly guy with a doubtful arm, but that's what the Mets were doing.
There is definitely a divide between rich and poor in baseball. But Selig and his fellow owners — who indeed may have salted away a
huge war chest anticipating labor troubles — cannot squeal about any lack
of money in their mom-and-pop business. Some smart operators were angling
to buy the Red Sox, one of the great franchises in American sports. One of the bidders who did not get the Red Sox was Charles Dolan, the
cable mogul who transmits a fluttery Channel 2 into my home cable box on
Long Island. (David Letterman and Paul Shaffer look alike on my set, which
is scary.) Dolan wanted the Red Sox for his Cablevision empire, and he
must have known something. As it turns out, the winning group includes The New York Times
Company The Red Sox are other fans' obsession. I absolutely love Boston,
particularly with snow in Back Bay, and I love Fenway Park, particularly
on promising May evenings before the perennial summer collapse. The team
itself, however, remains a cranky 25 guys, 25 cabs outfit, decade after
decade. Sorry to admit this, but it is sheer journalistic fun to giggle about
Harry Frazee's selling Babe Ruth and Bill Buckner's gaffe and Dan
Duquette's alienating Mo Vaughn in his prime. Presumably it will still be fun because the Red Sox are still haunted,
and will continue to find ways to lose and squabble under new management.
There is always another Jimy Williams. They emerge from the damp, foul
humors around Fenway. The gold rush for the Red Sox only proves that baseball must find a
better way to share the cable swag. Selig, whose family owns the Milwaukee
Brewers, is serving a blatant conflict of interest in his lust to kill off
the Minnesota Twins to the north of him. The owner-commissioner is not wrong, however, about the inequities,
which are at least 50 percent the fault of ownership and 50 percent the
fault of the truculent leadership of the players association. The union
that has not yet taken advantage of what could be a partnership with the
owners. Can't anyone say "salary cap"? There's plenty of loot to go around. There must be. Otherwise, John
Henry would not be the leading figure in the group buying the Red Sox.
Here is a guy who has been moaning and groaning about how hard it was to
make ends meet with the Florida Marlins. Henry could not arrange a new taxpayer-supported baseball-only stadium
in the Miami region, which would theoretically stabilize the Marlins. So
he is getting out in order to buy the Red Sox, admittedly a great
franchise in a rich market, but with its own immense ballpark issues in a
highly political region. And might I point out, he is playing with my
company's money. Meanwhile, the Marlins may soon be sold to Jeffrey Loria, the owner who
could not get it done with the Expos. Montreal taxpayers — still paying
for the wonderful honor of being host to the 1976 Summer Games — voted
"non, absolument, non!" to a new ballpark. Did that experience disillusion
Jeffrey Loria? No way. He's trying to buy the aforementioned Florida
Marlins. These rich guys are playing a fancy version of the shell game performed
by hustlers on cardboard boxes on the sidewalks of New York. They're
moving the cards around, and it's hard to follow, but one thing you know:
for the guys flicking the cards around, there must be some money in it, or
they wouldn't be hustling. Same with Selig and his
partners. By George Vecsey from The New York
Times December 23, 2001.